


In the Spaces Between

by alicephantomwise



Category: Arthurian Mythology & Adaptations - All Media Types, Merlin (BBC)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-20
Updated: 2011-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-15 19:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/164270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicephantomwise/pseuds/alicephantomwise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It turns out Merlin does burn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Spaces Between

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Major character death and minor character deaths aplenty (including a stillborn child); violence; the briefest allusion to rape; descriptions of self-harm; suicidal thoughts; angst; an unhappily-ever-after
> 
> This was written for a prompt over at the kink meme: Arthur/Merlin, Merlin dies. Alternatively, Arthur is so stricken with grief that he goes on a mad quest looking for a sorcerer to bring Merlin back to life. When it finally happens, Merlin is horrified because it's truly impossible to just bring someone back to life like that and he's fairly certain he's some kind of half-dead abomination. Arthur doesn't care. Bonus points: This is how Merlin lives forever waiting for the Once and Future King!
> 
> Deepest thanks to maybelater__ for the beta

**Prologue**

It turns out that Merlin does burn.

There are too many guards, really, too many people filling the courtyard. The pyre is too big, too grand, and the ropes are tied too tightly. And Merlin – Merlin is small in the middle of it, shoulders hunched and head bowed like maybe he can fold into himself, slip into negative space.

The air is still and the sun is bright overhead, spilling gold and glory at Uther’s feet, drenching Merlin in broken shadows. And Uther, high above and cloaked in velvet and silk, says nothing because Merlin can weave sorcery from words that aren’t even his own, because Uther is terrified that the pyre isn’t grand enough, the fire not hot enough.

The fire catches and still Merlin doesn’t look up. Not as the straw crunches sickeningly under the flames, not as the orange sparks near his feet. The fire lights up his face – black and sooty from two weeks in the dungeons with nothing but dirt as a blanket. He doesn’t move, and it’s so _wrong_ , all of this, because the fire is sliding across his feet, swirling around his legs, and still he doesn’t make a sound.

The sound that finally comes, a relief to those who were waiting for it, doesn’t come from Merlin at all. It’s the inhuman wail of a child who shouldn’t be here, who shouldn’t be watching bone turn to ash, skin dry to nothingness. And the sound is so loud, too loud, echoing off the walls, bouncing like it’s trapped within a mausoleum, like it’s from a world beyond.

The guards shove through the crowd, searching, and Uther can’t breathe and maybe this is sorcery because the air’s been chased out of his lungs and he can’t look away as the flames snap at Merlin’s clothes, as they flash in Merlin’s hair, haloing him in sudden, blinding gold.

But it’s too late: Merlin looks up, eyes wide, so wide, and perhaps this is what the crowd has been waiting for, some sign that this thin slip of a boy can spin magic with his voice. For some sign that this is something more. And perhaps now the ropes will fall away and Merlin will walk through fire, the magic spilling from his fingers. Perhaps now Uther will fall from a throne that has always been too high.

But then the flames veil him and it’s done, soundless and chilling. He shudders – if it’s him any longer, if his skin hasn’t molted, if his blood hasn’t boiled away – and then the fire traps him, consumes him, slays him, and if there’s anything left, no one wants to find it. No one wants to sort through the ashes, the dust, because there’s nothing so terrifying as magic that hasn’t quite died.

It takes a few minutes for the crowd to remember how to breathe, for the people to realize they’d been holding their breaths for something, for anything. They’d been so sure that Merlin would live, that Uther would fall on this clear, bright morning, but it was stupid, really, to think anything of the sort.

After all, the only person who might’ve saved Merlin is locked up in a dungeon, haunted by smoke he shouldn’t be able to smell.

 

 **1.**

Arthur counts the hours by the guards’ shifts. One, two, three, and Merlin died halfway into the first shift (he shouldn’t know this, shouldn’t know that the last word Merlin’s mouth shaped wasn’t sorcery at all but _Arthur_ , Arthur who hadn’t come) and so it’s twelve hours that bleed into each other before Uther comes.

“Arthur,” he says, and Arthur can’t look at him because he doesn’t want to see Merlin’s blood on his hands. He doesn’t want to leave this four by four cell that smells of ash and earth and piss, because as long as he’s in here, he can pretend that Merlin is waiting in his chambers with his insolent smile and bright, bright eyes.

And so Arthur says nothing.

“Arthur,” Uther says again, voice low and angry. “I can only hope that you have been ensorcelled, because otherwise there is no excuse for this behavior.” He’s wearing his reddest cloak, the one woven with gossamer gold silk, and he’ll parade around in it for the next few days in the way he always does after a sorcerer is executed and Arthur has never hated the cloak like he does now, has never hated _anything_ as much as he hates that cloak. And it looks even redder today, so red that it would make maidens blush, and Arthur wonders if perhaps Uther is literally wearing Merlin’s blood like a victory.

“You deliberately opposed my authority in front of the _whole court_ ,” Uther says sharply. “Arthur – look at me when I’m speaking to you.”

Arthur looks and he imagines he makes quite a wretched sight, the shadows slipping into the hollows underneath his eyes, fingers bruised and hand aching because at some point he’d punched the wall and maybe he _is_ ensorcelled because this isn’t normal, because his blood is rushing in his ears and he can hardly hear what Uther is saying and every time he blinks, all he can see is _Merlin_ : Merlin’s simple, shy smile, Merlin’s fingers graceful as he laces Arthur’s shirt. Merlin as he bows his head to Arthur, Merlin as he whispers _You’re my king, I’ve always served you_ in a way that betrays all that Uther is.

“Do you deny that he was a sorcerer?” Uther demands.

“No,” Arthur says, and Uther looks briefly relieved, like maybe he’d feared that Merlin had robbed Arthur of his speech, and it’s _ridiculous_ , Arthur thinks, because Merlin isn’t – wasn’t, now – evil, and of _course_ Merlin was magical because there’s no other explanation for the way his face went warm with laughter, his smile bright with sweetness.

Arthur tips his face up to look at Uther properly. Uther looks away as if he doesn’t like the blankness he sees in Arthur’s face.

“There will be consequences for your blatant disobedience,” Uther says, as if _this_ isn’t the most excruciating punishment that there ever was, trapping Arthur deep in the castle, helpless within four walls as he imagined Merlin’s screams, Merlin’s pale skin charring, burning. “This grief is unbecoming; the boy was a sorcerer, Arthur, and he’s carried out his plans well. You trusted him with your life, exactly as he had planned and I understand that he has been a companion of sorts to you for these past few years, but Arthur, you will be _king_ one day. You cannot lapse into these sullen fits of childishness – look at you, pining for this boy! Look at how he’s already influenced you!”

 _No_ , Arthur thinks, not Merlin who’d outlined Arthur’s body with his own when Arthur had been in bed for days with that fever, needing warmth that fur blankets couldn’t give. There’d been no evil in Merlin’s hands, just simple, helpless innocence in his smile, just loyalty in every breath. And Arthur has done exactly as Uther has ordered for more than twenty years, has believed exactly what Uther has told him to believe, but _this_ he cannot.

He doesn’t want to leave this cell because as Arthur belongs to Camelot – Merlin belongs to him.

“You will present yourself tomorrow morning,” Uther says flatly, “in front of the entire court and you will apologize for your disobedience. You will admit to having been ensorcelled and you will announce to the court that you have taken it on as a personal goal to see that all magic is eradicated from Camelot. And then when I give you your punishment, you will bow your head, thank me for my leniency, and you will do as I tell you.”

The anger is such a sudden thing and it feels a bit like madness, and Arthur _knows_ in that moment that if Uther had dared to walk into the cell instead of hiding cowardly behind those metal bars, Arthur would hurt him now. Arthur would hurt him for every single second Merlin had been stuck in that limbo between life and death, for every single time Merlin had prayed for a quicker death as the flames ate away at his skin and heated his blood. He wants to see Uther under him, skin painted with bruises and Arthur’s hate, Arthur’s _madness_ – for it has to be madness, but he doesn’t care anymore because all he can think is _Merlin Merlin Merlin_. He wants to make Uther cry out in the way Merlin must have cried out.

But right now Uther is too far away and Arthur wants to sleep, wants to be wrapped in dreams of Merlin, and he thinks: _Later_.

“ _Arthur_ ,” Uther snaps, and Arthur even manages a smile, though it must be a terrifying thing, because Uther is still not looking at him.

“Yes,” Arthur says. “Sire.”

***

There’s a boy waiting for him in his chambers, and Arthur hates him from the moment he sees him.

He’s too quiet, and maybe servants are supposed to be this quiet, but three years of Merlin and Arthur already misses a bath that goes cold too quickly because Merlin can’t be bothered to boil more water. The boy is efficient and competent and he doesn’t collapse on Arthur’s bed like it’s his own, doesn’t sit with Arthur as he eats to chatter about the gossip amongst the servants even though Arthur doesn’t care about the gossip amongst the servants. Arthur had just liked to listen to Merlin talk, had liked to see the way his face lit up as he yammered on and on and shamelessly stole Arthur’s food.

“Get out,” Arthur says quietly.

It turns out that he says it too quietly and the boy doesn’t hear him, not as he’s stooped over poking meekly at the fire and it’s too much: the _fire_ , orange and blue and _gold_ , the same gold that’s threaded into Uther’s cloak, the same gold that had swirled around Merlin and taken him and there’s just this _boy_ who’s supposed to replace Merlin, but he doesn’t belong here, not in Merlin’s space and before he knows it, Arthur’s yelling at the boy to get _out_. He’s throwing things: china and clothes and those stupid little figures that Merlin would buy at the market and leave all over Arthur’s chambers, and the boy is running, afraid, and Arthur locks the door behind him and can’t _breathe_ because Merlin is _dead_ and he _can’t_ be dead.

Because Arthur can’t live in a Camelot where Merlin doesn’t climb into his bed to tell him the stories his mother used to tell him as a boy in Ealdor when Arthur can’t sleep, as if he’s five years old. He can’t live in a Camelot where tournaments don’t start with Merlin getting him into his armor, whispering luck that Arthur will inform him he doesn’t need, and where tournaments don’t end with Merlin’s proud smile, brighter than the sun.

Arthur goes to bed, hungry and cold, and wonders if he’ll ever be warm again.

 

 **2.**

The court is laid out a bit like a crowded chessboard: the knights are restless in the back because they’ve promised their lives to Camelot but their allegiance to Arthur; the rooks and bishops line the walls, dressed in their fanciest clothes because yesterday’s execution and now this makes for one of the more exciting social events of the year; and Uther is high on his throne, wearing a crown that Arthur would think is gold if he’d never seen gold in Merlin’s eyes.

There are others, too, though, others that aren’t part of the court and yet are worth ten of it. Gwen is as near to Morgana as she can get without tipping into impropriety, and she looks worn and unhappy. And the white flowers in her hair would look ridiculous if Arthur – unable to sleep, terrified of nightmares that promise worse than what daylight brings – hadn’t spent the night sitting by the abandoned pyre (scooping up ashes because he’ll take what he can get) and hadn’t found the delicate white flowers Gwen had left there, unseen. He tries a smile out for her because she’s wearing the flowers in her hair just like Arthur had shoved a scrap of one of Merlin’s terrible neckerchiefs into one of his pockets when he’d found it this morning draped over a chair in his chambers.

It’s not enough, of course. But if they can pick up all these shattered pieces and just hold on – maybe, maybe _something_ , and Arthur doesn’t know what, but he’ll keep looking until he finds it.

And there’s Gaius, who looks as if he died yesterday as well. He’s leaning against a servant girl, his skin so thin it’s gone translucent enough to see the curve of each bone. He’s still, almost frighteningly still, and if Gaius died right here, right now, Arthur wouldn’t be surprised.

He thinks of Hunith in her small home, gathering berries and baking bread and knitting neckerchiefs in ten different colors and sending them to a boy who doesn’t exist anymore. Arthur will have to go to her, will destroy her entire, beautiful world, because all that’s left are ashes and memories.

He’s glad he left his sword in his chambers because the grief he’d thought he’d poured onto the pyre during the night comes again, more consuming than sorcery could ever be, and he wants to know whether the nobleman standing only five meters to his left – braying with laughter as he describes exactly how Merlin had collapsed, ringed in fire – would scream like Merlin had screamed if Arthur ran him though.

But then Uther nods, practiced and smooth because he probably did practice this speech thrice over, and it’s all such a _farce_. He’s using pretty words like _disappointment_ and _sorcery_ and _punishment_ , and all Arthur has to do is bow his head because if this is a chessboard, he’s always been the pawn.

Uther’s always been good at this, weaving his little fictions, and he even promises to forgive Arthur – because of _course_ Arthur had been ensorcelled by the sorcerer Merlin (and the nobles’ eyes all go wide with glee because _what_ a fantastic story this will make for days to come) – though Arthur hasn’t asked for forgiveness.

“Were you anyone else,” says Uther, circling Arthur but addressing the court, “you would be imprisoned for making such a spectacle of yourself and impeding the course of justice. But—” and now Arthur is watching him, head dipped in what might look like deference but is nothing of the sort—“taking into account that the sorcerer Merlin _undoubtedly_ used his darkest magics on you to insinuate himself into your household, you are not at fault. After all,” Uther says, and _oh_ , this is _perfect_ , because he’s laying a heavy hand on Arthur’s shoulder and pitching his voice low and steady, “was I not the one who gave him direct entrance to your household? You are a good man, Arthur, and you will make a fine king. Sorcery is a vile thing, and it can easily mislead even the best men.”

Uther’s fingers curl hard into Arthur’s shoulder. “You agree you were ensorcelled,” Uther says, and it’s halfway between a question and a statement, but Arthur knows he’s meant to answer.

And yes, of course he was ensorcelled, because he can’t stop thinking about Merlin, and three years ago life had expanded so that Merlin could fit into it and now Arthur’s drowning in those empty spaces, so _yes_ , Arthur was ensorcelled, is ensorcelled.

He says: “Yes.”

Uther looks satisfied and it’s amusing, really, because Uther is too busy searching for the deception in magic to see the deception in Arthur’s eyes.

“There will be those who do not believe you,” Uther says, picking up his thread in this beautifully planned drama. “Some, even, here in court. And so, Arthur, you must prove yourself, as you will have to prove yourself as king a thousand times over. Now,” he says, and finally he’s moving away from Arthur, back to a throne that in this very moment Arthur despises, “how will you do that, son?” His voice is warm, and he’s bright on his throne, the picture of fairness.

Arthur has worn his honor like a fine cloak from the moment he was knighted, kneeling here on this very floor six years ago. He’d looked up to see Uther smiling proudly down at him, and it was like having the sun and the moon and the stars all within reach. But now Uther’s face is tight with hard anger and the honor doesn’t matter, does it, because honor wasn’t enough to save Merlin.

And so it doesn’t matter that he kneels, doesn’t matter that he announces to the entire court that he will pledge his life, as his father has before him, to driving away this plague called magic. That under his lead, Camelot will finally free herself from magic’s poison, that under his lead, all practitioners of magic will burn as they ought to, so as to purify Camelot of the evil they have caused.

Uther looks pleased because Arthur’s played this game better than he had dared hope, and probably he’s thinking that this all turned out for the best. A sorcerer burned, and a prince championed. The nobles look thrilled at the display, because it’s all very _romantic_ : Arthur on his knees, promising himself to Camelot.

“Rise, Arthur,” Uther says grandly, and Arthur does, slow as a dream. “That is a good vow,” Uther says gently. “And tomorrow you will set out to keep it.”

Arthur looks up sharply.

“There is word of a sorcerer living near Camelot’s western border. You will arrest this man and bring him back to Camelot for his trial and punishment.” Uther smiles. “Do this, Arthur Pendragon, and your favor will be restored.”

“Yes, Sire,” Arthur says, because there’s nothing left.

***

He sleeps little and dreams less. When he wakes, he realizes that his dreams were empty of Merlin and it terrifies him, that he’s losing Merlin already. He grabs at the tattered neckerchief and buries his face in it, trying to remember the way Merlin’s eyes crinkled when he smiled, _really_ smiled, those only-for-Arthur smiles that were worshipful and overwhelming because he’d always seen a greatness and glory in Arthur that Arthur never could.

Arthur tries to remember except he _can’t_ , doesn’t remember the exact color of Merlin’s eyes or whether he had dimples, and it’s like Merlin is already fading and it’s too fast, too soon, because Arthur isn’t ready to let go.

***

The grey morning slides into a greyer day, and they’re ready to set off – Arthur and Tristan and Bors and a squire who will have to serve all three of them at once – when Morgana rides out, silken skirts fluttering alarmingly around her ankles. Gwen is riding after her, though much less skillfully, and Arthur notices that she’s not wearing her flowers anymore and he supposes that the flowers have died.

They’ll all forget, of course, eventually; Arthur just didn’t think it would happen this soon.

“No,” Arthur tells her. “You aren’t coming.”

Morgana lifts her jaw and manages the complicated feat of looking down her nose at him even though she’s technically looking up. “Uther already granted me permission. It’s quite fortuitous that this came up, actually. Gwen and I were just saying last week that we wanted to get out of the castle a bit, stretch our legs. Weren’t we?”

“Yes, my lady,” says Gwen, her smile worn at the edges.

Arthur looks to his right – and he wasn’t expecting to see anyone there, not really, but it occurs to him that the only reason he looked is because that’s where Merlin would be: to his right, close at hand. And now there’s just empty space where Merlin should’ve been, _would’ve_ been, grinning fondly back at him.

It’s the emptiness that makes him say, “ _Fine_. But do keep in mind that this isn’t actually a jaunt into the countryside; we’ll be going a bit faster than you’re used to and there may be a very dangerous confrontation with a very dangerous sorcerer. If all you’re looking for is a stretch of your legs, you might be better off taking a turn around one of the gardens.”

Morgana looks at him, long and slow, her mouth drawn in at the corners, and he realizes that she’s here for _him_. Uther and the court may have eaten up the mockery that was yesterday, but Morgana isn’t so easily fooled. She smiles at him like he’s a baby bird, liable to fall and break a wing, but he merely shakes his head and rides ahead.

 

 **3.**

The two-day ride takes three days, but Arthur doesn’t mind.

At some point, the castle fades out of view and everything narrows to just this: the cold wind cutting into his skin, the sun pristine overhead, washing the world clean, Morgana blithely informing him that this isn’t a _race_ , Arthur, and then shamelessly racing him anyway. And Merlin – well, the grief is still there, because he can’t outrun it though he tries that first day. It’s stitched into his skin like a cloak he can’t shrug off. And every breath aches a bit, because every breath is one more breath in a world that doesn’t have Merlin in it.

But it does get easier. He busies himself with the mundane, like keeping an eye out for thieves and trying to calculate how far they’ve gone and how far they have to go. Gwen goes starry-eyed when Tristan tells her of his love, a maiden who lives far across the sea. Bors keeps them entertained with a bawdy story of a woman who falls madly in love with a bull.

(“Bors,” Arthur says reprovingly. “There’s a lady present.”

“Oh, don’t _fuss_ , Arthur,” says Morgana. “Though, I _thank_ _you_ for your concern.”

“I was talking about Gwen,” Arthur says smugly.)

Sleep is still an elusive thing though, and this stillness makes it all the worse. He assigns Tristan and Bors the first and second watches so that he can take the third, but he stays awake through the night anyway, poking at the dying fire and trying to not think of ashes.

He’s not particularly surprised when Morgana comes to sit next to him just as the dawn spills over the horizon. She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just pulls her cloak more tightly around her shoulders and watches the fire give a final shudder before it fades. And then she tucks her small hand in the crook of his elbow and sighs.

“Do you remember when you were five and that mangy pup of yours died?”

“I don’t think Merlin would appreciate being compared to a mangy pup,” Arthur says.

Morgana slides her thumb under his eyes, tracing the smudges of sleeplessness tattooed there. “Oh, Arthur,” she says.

He shoves her hand away. “Don’t,” he says crossly. “Don’t, Morgana. How would you feel if it were Gwen?”

Morgana looks over her shoulder briefly, as if to ascertain that Gwen is still curled up there in her too thin bedroll, hair fluffily obscuring her face. “Empty,” she says. “And you’re allowed to feel empty, Arthur, no matter what Uther says. You’re allowed to have loved Merlin, fleas and all. But this – this is a mistake.”

Arthur laughs, and it’s an unwilling sound, hard and frozen. “This, whatever it may seem to you, isn’t a pleasure jaunt, Morgana. I’ve lost my _favor_ , remember? This is a punishment; I’ve no choice. And anyway, I don’t see what’s so strange about this. My father tells me to walk and I run; that’s all I’ve ever done.”

Morgana shakes her head, looking a bit wild about the eyes. “Not this. I meant that speech – all that pretty rhetoric about driving magic from Camelot. Uther enjoyed it, I know, and the court is holding you up to be some sort of tragic hero – fools that they are,” she adds darkly. “And it would all be such a splendid little story if we didn’t both know that every single word was a lie.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” says Arthur, and tries to shrug her off.

“Don’t be purposefully thick, Arthur, it doesn’t suit you,” Morgana says with hushed impatience. “You don’t believe that Merlin had put an enchantment on you, regardless of what Uther would like everyone to believe. And you don’t think that Merlin was evil—”

“Of _course not_ ,” Arthur says, and he tries to stand because he doesn’t want to talk about this, not to Morgana, or anyone because Merlin and the memories that Arthur has left of him are private things, not for the likes of Morgana who doesn’t know the way Merlin had knelt before Arthur and pledged himself to him, chastely pressing his mouth to the tender inside of Arthur’s wrist.

“Then what,” says Morgana quietly, “are we doing out here?”

“I am under orders,” Arthur says flatly. “You, on the other hand, are under the misguided impression that your presence is welcome here.”

Morgana smiles thinly. “Tell me that you think magic is evil. That Merlin really was an evil sorcerer who was biding his time in your service, waiting for the right moment to kill you.” At Arthur’s dark look, she continues, “Or, if you like, tell me that you think magic isn’t the evil thing that Uther has said it is. Tell me that there’s a _reason_ you knelt in front of the throne and willingly deceived all of Camelot. Tell me,” she says, “that you know what you’re doing.”

And, looking down at her bowed head, Arthur doesn’t know. Twenty years and it has always been so clear: magic had been the thing that had killed his mother. Magic is what stirs the terrible monsters that Arthur and his knights have to deal with on a weekly basis. The fear of magic is what keeps the people from straying too far from their homes at night. All that is true, Arthur _knows_ this as well as he knows his hand around the hilt of his sword, sure and strong.

But then there’s Merlin.

“I don’t know,” he says softly. “I don’t – know.”

Morgana closes her eyes. “And that’s the problem,” she says, voice sounding a bit odd. “Because if you think magic is irrefutably evil, that’s at least _something_. And if you think that magic is irrefutably good, well – that’s something too. It’s those spaces in between that are dangerous.”

Arthur looks at her very carefully and a bit helplessly, but it’s like she’s given him a sentence in code without the key, and try as he might, he can’t make any sense of it. But he feels like she’s said something important, so he pockets it for later and offers this, low and pained: “I miss him, Morgana. And I – I’ve never been as scared as I was that day, sitting in that cell and hoping that this was all just some terrible nightmare.”

Morgana gives him a pained smile of her own. “I know,” she says. “And I’m scared for you.”

 

 **4.**

The village is too small to have a name. It’s just a haphazard scattering of shoddily put together houses, and Arthur doesn’t recognize it for a village at all until he’s standing in the middle of it, kicking at broken pottery, walking on earth gone to decay. There’s a faint mist licking at his boots, and the air is so heavy with the cold that every movement is painful, that every word hurts. The sun is gone – odd, that, because not twenty minutes ago Gwen had urged Morgana to wear a veil to protect her fair skin – and the village is doused by shadow.

And it smells a bit like death.

“ _Arthur_ ,” Morgana says, voice sounding strained and maybe a bit shrill. “Let’s turn back.”

When he turns to look at her, surprised, she says softly but no less troubled, “There’s something wrong with this place.”

And there _is_ , he thinks, because entire villages aren’t supposed to feel like tombs. There’s laundry on that fence, as if it was put out to dry years ago and then forgotten; a garden, there, that must’ve been meticulously tended once but is now overgrown with weeds; and worst of all, a child’s tattered doll perched against a wooden post, grinning obscenely up at them.

Tristan draws close to him, voice pitched low. “It’s as if they just _left_ , sire. They didn’t take anything with them. Who knows how long this place has sat like this?”

Arthur has a sudden thought, a horrible image ripping through him: broken bodies tucked into their beds, an entire village that had gone to sleep one night and never woken up.

His voice is flat. “If they left at all.”

“Arthur,” Morgana calls urgently. “There’s something _wrong_ here. This isn’t – if this magic, this is no ordinary sorcerer. Uther meant to have you arrest some shopkeeper reputed to sell magical amulets. Something else – something awful – happened here. We should return to Camelot and tell Uther.”

Arthur is about to agree – because Morgana looks so afraid, Morgana who is _never_ afraid, her eyes wide and her skin so pale that it’s almost gone to translucence, and because he doesn’t have the manpower to fight the sorcery that he knows is here, that he can feel buzzing deep within his bones, malicious and terrible – when he hears it.

“Do you hear that?” he demands. Tristan shakes his head and Arthur tries to listen, tries to dig beneath the noises that seem unnaturally loud: Morgana’s horse shifting anxiously, Gwen’s panicked breaths, his own heart thumping against the cage of his ribs. And _yes_ , there it is, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time, the blurry, distant sound of someone singing.

He runs.

It’s coming from one of the houses, the last one in a deplorable row, and he can hear it clearly as he unsheathes his sword and approaches the door, Tristan behind him. It’s a man’s voice, not singing like he thought before but chanting with a rhythm that doesn’t make sense to Arthur’s ears. Arthur presses his ear to the door, trying to map out the inside of the house as best as he can before he goes in, and then, mouthing _three, two, one_ at Tristan, he wrenches open the door.

He doesn’t know what he’d expected, in what little time he’d had to expect anything. But whatever it was, he’d not expected a wizened old man perched on an overly padded chair, spindly legs poking out of a thick robe, mouth stretched in a hideous and toothless smile.

“Ah,” the man says, not looking up. His eyes are a glazed white and Arthur feels foolish, sword drawn against someone who can’t even see him, but not foolish enough to drop it. “Arthur Pendragon,” he says, his grin managing to go even wider, revealing gums that have withered to black. “I have been waiting a long time for you.”

 

 **5.**

“Who are you?” Arthur demands, voice edged with something – fear, maybe, though that doesn’t make sense; there’s nothing to be _afraid_ of, only antiquated furniture and crumbling walls and the desperate surety of emptiness. And there’s the old man, a sack of bones draped carefully over the chair like death has skipped over him and he’s left picking anxiously at a bit of cloth, waiting for its next visit.

“No one,” the man says. “Or your father’s greatest enemy, if you want to be generous.” He gives a raspy laugh and strangles on the air, coughing. “But generosity has never been a trait of the Pendragons, has it, young prince?”

“Your _name_ ,” Arthur says, “without the riddles, this time.”

The man smiles blackly. “You won’t remember it tomorrow. In fact, I don’t even remember it now.”

“Then tell me what happened here,” Arthur says. “To this place.”

“This place is as it always was,” the man says gleefully. “But you’re still not asking the right question.”

Arthur’s had too little sleep and too much sorrow to humor an old man who shouldn’t still be alive. “I’m all out of questions, unfortunately. Let’s go,” he says to Tristan. “There’s nothing for us here.”

The man falls into broken, gasping laughter. “I ask for the right question and you give me the wrong answer. Leave, if you can, young prince, but I think that you’ll find that all roads lead back here. You see,” he says, wobbling to his feet, and it’s a bit like watching a foal learn how to walk, staggering hopelessly until he finally gets it right. “You’ve lost something that I’m afraid you can’t do without.” He’s grinning that horrible grin again, all dark space with a darker hint of tongue, and Arthur suddenly wonders whether he’s waiting for death or if he _is_ Death, if this is his dilapidated castle.

“I tire of your riddles,” Arthur says flatly.

“No riddle,” the man chides. “Only clarity.”

He throws something, then, and it should be impossible that he knows exactly where Arthur is, but he does. And Arthur should move out of the way because it could be anything, because he knows that magic comes in so many different shapes: in lilting, meaningless words, in a naïve, innocent child’s palm. In Merlin’s sweet smile as the dawn streams into the room.

Arthur shouldn’t catch it, but he does. His fingers curl around the edge of the cloth the man had been plucking at earlier, and it’s oddly stiff, as if it had been recently damp and then put out to dry for too long. It smells like the sharp green of grass under the sun, like the acridity of sweat, _so_ familiar and so dear that it takes Arthur a moment to place it, because now he can’t imagine that he’s ever done without it.

But he does place it, because the cloth is a faded red, exactly the same shade as the scrap of the neckerchief tucked neatly beneath the plates of armor that curve around Arthur’s shoulder and settle firmly over his heart.

Arthur looks up – or, he means to, anyway, but then the world unfurls in a brilliant kaleidoscope of color, so bright that it nearly blinds him. And then it bleaches into white and he can’t see anything at all.

***

 

Arthur wakes to a softer world.

It’s not waking, not really; for one thing, he’s still standing, and for another, sleep is a finite thing, with a definite start and finish, but this – this is something that’s ended before it’s begun. He’s standing exactly where he was a moment ago, the scrap of Merlin’s neckerchief still clutched in one hand, his sword still loose in the other.

But everything else is all wrong.

The broken windows have been glassed anew, and they’re generous with the light they let in, washing the room with color. The walls have been carefully rebuilt, the jagged cracks sealed to invisibility. The furniture is still a mishmash of odd patterns and odder shapes, but the patterns are no longer so faded, the cloth no longer stretched so thin with wear. And the stench of death that had clung to Arthur’s skin like it desperately wanted in, like it had greedily seized him and meant to keep him – that’s gone.

And so is Tristan.

The old man is gone too, but maybe not gone so much as replaced; there’s a boy now where the old man had stood, young, perhaps younger than Arthur. His smile is wide and unpracticed, the jaunty curve of his mouth eerily familiar. What age had robbed him of, his newfound youth has given him back: he’s kicking up out of his woolen robe and staring wondrously at his legs as if he’s never seen them before.

And maybe he hasn’t, Arthur thinks. There’s no blindness in the boy’s eyes, just green.

“What have you done?” Arthur says hoarsely, and when he moves, there’s a moment of uncertainty – this world isn’t his, he knows this somehow, down to his very bones, and it’s like all the rules that have underscored his every thought and act for twenty years have fallen aside, as useless as Uther’s swords against magic. But his voice is his and he takes a step forward, looking around for a Tristan who isn’t there. “Where am I?”

The boy is marveling at his fingers, smooth and limber, folding them into a fist and then wiggling each one in turn. “What?” he says distractedly. His voice is deeper than Arthur would’ve guessed, perhaps a shade too deep for such a young, sweet face, and Arthur wonders if it’s sorcery that had leeched the life from him, or if they’ll all age like that – if Arthur will shrivel up too, one day, left alone to count his dead.

“Oh,” the boy says brightly. “Right.”

“What is this place?” Arthur says sharply. “Where’s Tristan?”

The boy smiles and bows his head in a mocking display of deference. “Don’t you recognize it? Young prince?” He tilts his head. “Listen.”

Arthur doesn’t want to listen, because the fear that he has always kept at bay with a sword and a bit of valor is suddenly here, close enough to smother. This is another world and there’s no one to _fight_ , not here, because how do you fight an entire world? He shuts his eyes because it’s all so conflicting, because Merlin was magic, and Merlin had made him smile. But _this_ is magic too, and it terrifies Arthur, leaves him helpless and numb in a world not his own.

And outside – there are noises he’d not heard before because he’d not been looking for them. They’re familiar, dear noises, the stirring of the lower town just before the dawn outside the castle walls. But those noises don’t belong here, not in a village plagued by death.

The boy laughs and runs at and then past Arthur, past where Tristan should be, a gawky mess of wrists and knees. He throws open the door and tumbles into the sunlight and Arthur follows, the dread curdling low in his belly.

It’s the same little village, but it too has been transformed. The houses are lined in neat rows, strung with lines for the washing. There’s a wagon, there, leaving a trail of dust that puffs up and then settles back onto the ground. There are people milling about in the front yards, calling to each other across their fences, singing as they stoop over their gardens. There are children as well, shrieking and climbing all over each other, falling down and taking a moment of utter stillness to decide that they’ll laugh this one off instead of cry, and Arthur can’t help but look mistrustfully at them, because _they shouldn’t exist._

“Well?” the boy says, looking thrilled. He’s standing in the sunlight, all the details of his face smoothed away. He looks expectantly up at Arthur, but Arthur’s still standing inside the house, hand on the door because he can’t be here, _shouldn’t_ be here, and all he wants is to close the door and be back in that broken house, in a village occupied by no one.

“This isn’t my world,” Arthur says.

The boy laughs again, tilting his face up into the sun. “How arrogant you Pendragons are. There are more worlds than just yours.”

“Take me back,” Arthur says, grabbing at the boy’s arm, twisting a fragile shoulder. “Now.”

“You’re hurting me!” the boy exclaims. He’s writhing in Arthur’s grip, contorting his arm this way and then that, but Arthur is stronger and angrier, and if the boy’s fortunate, all Arthur will leave him with are bruises.

“What is this place?” Arthur demands. “Why have you brought me here?”

The boy gives up, finally, and looks disgustedly at his arm, limp in Arthur’s hold, and then up at Arthur. “To _help_ you, though you wouldn’t know it, the way you’re assaulting me,” he says waspishly. “I told you; you’ve lost something and I’m to give you the chance to get it back.” He shades his eyes with his hand and stares hard at something particularly interesting to his left before smiling, satisfied. “Ah,” he says, and then gives the arm still in Arthur’s grip an experimental tug before giving it up as a bad job. “There we are.”

Arthur follows the boy’s gaze.

Later, he’ll realize that he’d expected this all along, ever since the old man had tossed him the scrap of cloth back in Arthur’s world, dingy and decaying as it was. Later, Arthur will think _of course_ , because Arthur has never, ever lost anything so important to him as _this_. (Later, far, far later, Arthur will sit on his bed, surrounded by _what if_ s and possibilities and he’ll wonder if this is what madness is like, wanting something that has been utterly and forever lost.)

But now there’s just this: he looks different, like maybe Arthur’s remembered him wrong, and maybe he _has_ remembered him wrong, because with each day, Merlin slips further and further away. His hair is messy beyond repair, but still dark, _so_ dark against pale, pale skin. His hands – and how had Arthur forgotten his _hands?_ – are expressive, never still, and always a bit too thin. And Arthur’s too far away right now to see Merlin’s smile, but _that_ he’s not forgotten, will never forget. Merlin’s mouth is curved in a delighted smile because when Merlin smiles, it’s always unrestrained – and maybe the smile is a bit secretive, maybe his smile has _always_ held a secret, but Arthur hadn’t discovered it until too late.

And the aching emptiness that Arthur has carried with him for five days – heavy and unbearable as the urn Arthur had had sent to Hunith – is already gone, shed here on the porch. It’s all wrong, because Merlin is _dead_ , had _died_ , had whispered Arthur’s name over and over, but Merlin couldn’t escape fire and Arthur was a prisoner of stone and metal. And if Merlin is dead, then all these people are dead as well, and maybe Arthur too, but it’s as if Arthur has been starving for weeks and if he’s dead, he doesn’t care, he _doesn’t_ , because Merlin had been his life, and if this is death, here with Merlin, Arthur doesn’t need life.

Maybe one day Arthur would’ve learned to live without Merlin. But now he doesn’t have to.

“This is my choice?” Arthur says, not looking at the boy, not looking at anyone but Merlin, because the last time Arthur hadn’t looked after him properly, Merlin had faded to ash and dust and nothingness.

The boy yanks his arm away from Arthur and crows when Arthur lets go. “Yes,” he says, sounding bored. “You went and got your warlock killed. Apparently, you’re meant to have a second chance.”

“I do,” Arthur says, and his smile tastes unfamiliar, like he had forgotten what happiness was. They can all run away together, Arthur thinks dizzily, he and Merlin and maybe Morgana and Gwen. They can stay somewhere and live simply, and all those things that Arthur had lost – leaning against Merlin’s side, warm and drunk and content; listening to Merlin’s long-suffering sigh like his life was difficult whenever Arthur told him to clean his boots; telling Merlin one of Bors’ rude stories just to watch him flush pink all the way up to his ears – can happen again.

“I want him back, I mean,” Arthur clarifies.

“I see that,” the boy says. “But this is not a gift, Arthur Pendragon. Those who live here, in this world, have already had their time in yours. They’re not meant to go back and few want to. Here, they are content, never without food. And they – we, now, I suppose – escape things like old age or disease. We have our family—” and he gestures vaguely— “as your warlock has, because everyone dies eventually, don’t they?”

“Merlin doesn’t,” Arthur says with absolute certainty, watching as the man Merlin’s standing with slings a companionable arm across Merlin’s shoulders. “Merlin doesn’t have anyone. His mother’s alive.”

The boy laughs, delighted. “Then I suppose that’s taken care of,” he says, and perhaps there’s a trace of malice there, but when Arthur looks at the boy’s face, he doesn’t see any of the cruel old man, just the flushed cheeks of a young boy who’s been out for too long in the sun. “Unfortunately,” he says, “there’s just one other pesky thing to get out of the way. As I was saying – people aren’t meant to go from this world back to your world. Death is a one-way gate. So, we have a problem. For your warlock to cheat that gate – well, there must be consequences.”

“Consequences,” Arthur says, and now he can almost hear Merlin’s laughter, clear and sweet, carrying across the din of voices, the steady rhythm of an axe against wood, the clang of a hammer against metal. “What consequences?” Arthur says, but it’s languid and unconcerned, because whatever it is, it won’t matter. If Merlin’s only allowed a certain amount of years, then they’ll make the most out of what they’ve got. If Merlin has to make do without his eyesight, then they’ll cure his blindness with magic. If Merlin’s life can only be given alongside someone else’s death, then Arthur will kill the man who has been locked up in the dungeon for weeks for raping Lady Cornelia’s daughter and who Uther hasn’t got around to executing yet.

“Ah,” the boy says, and his grin is terrible, somehow all the worse for having got his teeth back. “That would make it too simple, I’m afraid. No, you must make the decision based on what you _fear_ may happen; only that way will you come to know what your warlock is worth to you.”

Merlin, Arthur thinks, is worth everything: a throne, a kingdom, _everything_. “Yes,” Arthur says.

“Go, then,” the boy says, but Arthur’s already going.

He’s mere centimeters away when Merlin sees him and Arthur thinks _yes_ , because this feels right, having Merlin so close and alive, warm and breathing. His voice is easy and loved and beloved and always there, until it wasn’t. And Arthur can’t help but _touch_ , can’t help but reach out as he’s done a million times, sliding his hand around Merlin’s wrist, thinking that he’ll never again let go.

And Merlin – Merlin looks at him, wide-eyed and shocked, and this time, Arthur will memorize the shade of those eyes, will have a shirt made in that color so he never forgets it. But Merlin’s mouth – always so quick to curl into a smile – curls the wrong way, and his mouth goes thin and flat, and then he’s saying Arthur’s name but it’s all wrong and it’s like they’re back in Camelot, Arthur in the dungeon, Merlin tied to the stake.

“Arthur, _no!_ ”

But then everything goes black and there’s nothing, neither death nor life – just nothingness.

 

 **6.**

Somewhere behind them, Morgana is screaming.

Arthur still has hold of Merlin’s wrist, the fine bones grinding together underneath his fingers, Merlin’s pulse skittering wildly under his touch, and he should let go now except he _can’t_ because Merlin’s _here_ and he’s _real_ , and it’s a bit like waking up from a dream that doesn’t quite want to release him, so he’s caught, suspended in this dream come to life.

Merlin looks terrified, his face gone to white, washing all his fine features away, and Arthur thinks _no_ , that doesn’t make sense at all, because Merlin should be _happy_ ; he’s here, he’s _alive_ , here with Arthur and he reaches up to, he doesn’t know, to press the color back into Merlin’s skin, to curve his hand around the nape of Merlin’s neck and haul him in until he can feel him properly, warm and real and Arthur’s.

Merlin steps back in three jerky movements, like he doesn’t have the energy to do it in one.

Morgana’s screams cease and the sharp, sudden silence is a painful thing, a heavy presence of something indefinable, something not quite right, instead of an absence of noise.

“What have you done?” Merlin says, and his voice is all wrong, hard and desperate with none of the sweetness that Arthur remembers. His mouth is a white line, a gash across his face, and Arthur wants to laugh because this is so _ridiculous_ , Merlin’s _alive_ and everything is right now, as it should be, but here they are, standing in a village that’s not as deserted as it seems, underneath stormy skies. And Arthur’s smile feels grotesque, like a broken mirror that reflects Merlin’s face, gilded with horror.

“What have you done?” Merlin demands again, stumbling back like he can’t bear to have Arthur this close. He’s all wrists and elbows and suddenly Arthur can’t help but think that whoever put him back together did it haphazardly because surely Merlin was never so delicate-looking. But maybe it’s just that Arthur’s never seen such explicit fear on Merlin’s face; it’s almost obscene, the way it carves Merlin’s face into something misshapen, something macabre, and Arthur reaches for him again, wanting to smooth everything away so he can just have Merlin again, he doesn’t understand why Merlin is being like this—

“Oh, _God_ ,” Merlin says, the end of it disappearing into a furious sob. His shoulders hunch and he’s shaking and sobbing and screaming all at once and all Arthur can do is watch helplessly. “What have you _done?_ ” Merlin says, again and again until it all runs together into a meaningless litany, hands yanking at his hair, fingernails digging into his skin like he can rip it off, like he wants out of it.

“Merlin, _stop it_ ,” Arthur says, and he means it to come out as an order, but Merlin’s not _listening_ , and _God_ , why is he _doing that?_ There’s blood underneath Merlin’s fingernails now, striped across his arm where he’s trying to peel off the skin, like he’s looking for something – muscle, maybe. Bone. And Arthur’s seen so much blood in his twenty years – has had his hands stained with it, has had to wash the gore that flecked onto the fine hairs on his arm – but it’s different when it’s Merlin’s and he has to – he can’t look, he _can’t look_.

Merlin looks up, then, with wild eyes, eyes that are no longer blue, no longer _any_ color. “Get it off,” he says, voice pitched near a scream. “Get it – I can’t – please, oh _God_ , I can’t—”

Arthur reaches for him again, tries not to look at all the blood. “Merlin,” he says and tries to stop the trembling of his hand. “Merlin, you’re here, you’re _safe_. Will you just—”

He’s nearly touching him now, fingertips a whisper away from Merlin’s face, and if he can just – thumb under Merlin’s eyelashes, thread his hand in the soft, feathery hair at the nape of Merlin’s neck, then maybe—

Merlin runs.

Arthur follows.

Fear gives Merlin speed – and maybe the magic is helping, but Arthur doesn’t want to think about that now, doesn’t want to think at all, all he wants to do is get Merlin back, chase away whatever’s haunting him (and maybe it’s _him_ , he thinks, maybe Merlin is scared of _Arthur_ , but Arthur doesn’t want to think about that either). All he wants to do is uncover Merlin’s smile, the way it brightens his whole face, the way the whole world just narrows to Merlin, just for a deep, sweet second.

But Merlin’s running, fast enough that Arthur can’t catch him, yet not so fast that Arthur loses him.

They run through the village, like the sun chasing the moon through the sky but never catching up to it, and if Arthur had thought that the cloying scent of death that hung, sickly sweet, from the houses and clung to the road would be left behind, he’s wrong, because he can still smell it, as if it has burned through his blood, viscous and consuming.

“Merlin,” he shouts, the wind sweeping his voice up, swirling it until it’s lost.

They run for minutes, days, maybe, and so when Merlin stops, it takes Arthur a moment to remember what standing still is like. He feels heavy, every breath a burden, but he can’t look away from Merlin, not even to slump over to catch the breaths that rip through his chest, rattle wildly against his ribs. He staggers over to clasp Merlin’s wrist and hates the way Merlin flinches, fingers furled into a fist like he can’t stand this – Arthur’s touch.

“I can’t,” Merlin says into a sob, and _finally_ the pallid tinge to his skin has been banished by the pink of exhaustion. The blood has dried on his arms and it looks odd, nothing like blood at all, but as if Merlin’s splattered paint all over himself. He’s trembling like he’s cold, and he looks so frail, and Merlin’s always been scrawny, angles where curves should be, but he looks fragile now, eyes too luminous in his face. He’s blinking fast like he doesn’t know where he is, like he’s woken up from a nightmare and found the nightmare to be real.

“I’m dead,” Merlin says, his voice going eerily flat. “I – died.”

“You’re all right now,” Arthur says, pulling once, twice, and then Merlin lets himself be gathered up to Arthur. Arthur does this carefully, tucking Merlin’s cold hands in between them, curving one arm around Merlin’s waist, slipping his fingers through Merlin’s hair to cradle his head. “You’re all right,” Arthur says, and now that he’s got Merlin close, he doesn’t know what to _do_. He strokes Merlin’s hair cautiously, the arm around Merlin’s waist tense because he’s afraid that Merlin will try to run again.

“You’re okay,” Arthur says, and he thinks he can make Merlin believe it. He’s got Merlin’s neck bare, and he fits his chin into the crook of neck into shoulder. “You’re okay,” he says again and again because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“I died,” Merlin says dully.

“You did,” Arthur says. “But you’re – but you’re all right, everything’s fine now.”

“No,” Merlin says, still in that terrible monotone, so at odds with how he feels under Arthur’s hands: shaking like he’s halfway into a seizure, hands limp on Arthur’s shoulders, his heart an unsteady lilt against Arthur’s. He’s not looking at Arthur, no, his eyes are closed like he doesn’t want to see Arthur, doesn’t want to see this world that’s washed silver and gold and bright with sunlight.

“Look at me,” Arthur says, trying to be gentle, but he doesn’t know how because Merlin’s the gentle one, all soft smile and tender fingers. Arthur’s hands only know how to take life; they’re clumsy when it comes to keeping it. “Merlin, _look_ at me.”

Merlin looks and Arthur thinks _thank God_ , because Merlin’s eyes are blue again, so familiar that he can’t believe he’d ever forgotten it. “You shouldn’t have done this,” Merlin says, and now he’s pushing ineffectually at Arthur’s chest, trying to get away, but Arthur has lost him once and he’ll never, ever let go of him again. “You shouldn’t have – I _died_ , I’m meant to be _dead_ , I’m not – this isn’t – you should’ve _left me there!”_

“ _Stop it!”_ Arthur says sharply, catching one of Merlin’s wrists. “Shut up, don’t say that!” He can’t – God, maybe this is what the old man – the boy – meant about there having to be consequences; maybe Merlin has gone mad, maybe this isn’t Merlin at all, just some wispy shadow of what Merlin was, a broken little doll.

“I _saved you_ ,” Arthur says, releasing Merlin around the waist in favor of grabbing both of his wrists. “Listen to me,” he says roughly, shaking Merlin as if he can shake the hysteria out of him. “I _saved you_ , you’re _Merlin_ , you’re here and you’re safe and you’re with me, do you understand? You can’t – God, don’t _say_ things like that!”

He feels so _helpless_ , and it all feels like insanity, the wind rushing through his ears and having Merlin so close but not because this isn’t what he’d wanted, he’d wanted _Merlin_ and Merlin should be happy to be here, because he’s _meant_ to be here, with Arthur. He shouldn’t want to be back there, _dead_ , no one wants to be _dead_. No one wishes for death, not when they have a second chance at life.

Merlin’s safe. Arthur saved him.

Merlin makes a strangled noise, one that dies long before it reaches his mouth. His mouth flutters into the shapes of words that never make it into existence, like he desperately needs to say something but doesn’t know how. Arthur stares at Merlin’s thin wrists in his hands, at the way the ends of the bones jut out of his skin in strange knobs.

“I saved you,” he says again, needing Merlin to believe it.

Needing himself to believe it.

“Arthur,” Merlin finally says, and Arthur tries not to hear the hopeless quality to it, the sigh that Merlin gives as he comes closer, laying his head on Arthur’s shoulder, winding his arms around Arthur’s waist and resting his hands on Arthur’s upper back where it curves into his shoulders. Arthur can feel Merlin’s mouth trembling against his neck, like Merlin is whispering into Arthur’s skin, but what he’s saying, Arthur doesn’t know.

Arthur smoothes his hand down Merlin’s back, fingers trailing bumpily along Merlin’s spine, and he doesn’t even realize he’s speaking until he vaguely notes that his breath is ruffling Merlin’s hair.

“Everything’s all right, you’re happy now, Merlin. You’re happy.”

He wishes that Merlin would say _yes_ , yes, everything’s all right now, _yes_ , he’s happy now, here. With Arthur.

But Merlin doesn’t say anything at all.

 

 **7.**

“Where will you go?” Morgana asks, with an emphatic _you_ that will never again be _we_ , and as Arthur watches the flames catch, the smoke lazily writhing into nonsense symbols before evanescing out of existence, he wonders how many he’s lost by saving Merlin.

And looking at Merlin now – sitting away where the light can’t reach him, the darkness caressing his face, the moonlight too wary to approach this thing that wears Merlin’s face but can’t be Merlin at all, _can’t be_ , because Merlin should be sitting too close for propriety, his thigh a long, lean line against Arthur’s, not thirty meters away, spilling silent sobs to the shadows – Arthur doesn’t know if he’s even got Merlin.

“Away,” Arthur says shortly. He’s tired, so tired, and he doesn’t want Morgana here, he doesn’t want _any_ of them here: Tristan hasn’t stopped fingering his crossbow since Arthur led Merlin back down into the broken village, hand clasped around Merlin’s wrist and glaring hard at each one of them in turn; Bors has got his sword balanced reverently across his knees, and he and Tristan are whispering something – treason, probably, but no, that can’t be it, because _Arthur_ is the one who’s committed treason, hasn’t he? He thinks that if he doesn’t leave with Merlin soon, Bors will murder him in his sleep, kneeling over Merlin and counting each breath, _one_ , _two_ , _three_ , and letting his knife slide in at _four_ , so graceful that Merlin’s heart won’t recognize death until _five_ doesn’t come. Bors has always had too steady of a hand.

They’re not Arthur’s knights, after all. They’re Camelot’s. And tomorrow, sure as the sunrise, Arthur will no longer be Camelot’s crown prince.

“I won’t tell you that you’ve done something unforgiveable,” Morgana says, “since you must know that already.” She looks pale and ill in the firelight, her fingers casting spidery shadows onto the ground. She’s looked pale all day, actually, brave Morgana who’d tucked Arthur close when he was four and afraid of the malevolent darkness that hid in his chambers and came to life when his servants left him for the night. Brave Morgana, who’d sat upon her horse in that dead, abandoned village, trembling and then screaming herself hoarse.

He hates her now for being scared.

“I don’t know, actually,” Arthur says acidly, summoning anger because that’s all there’s left. This is _Merlin_ , and this is how it’s supposed to be, Merlin at Arthur’s side, and maybe that huddled creature over there isn’t exactly Arthur’s Merlin but Arthur can _make him_ be Merlin and everything will be all right, as it’s meant to be.

Morgana looks at him with slow horror. “Arthur, you can’t believe—”

“What?” Arthur says sharply and too loudly, apparently, because the squire – who’d been polishing Tristan’s sword with a cloth that isn’t quite clean – starts and drops the sword. “ _What?_ ” he says again, quieter but no less fierce. “He wasn’t _meant to die_ , Morgana! What was I supposed to do, just leave him there? _Dead?_ ”

“ _Yes_ ,” Morgana says, her face suddenly infused with a burst of color. “Yes, that’s _exactly_ what you were supposed to do! This isn’t – this isn’t like going on a quest to rescue a princess who’s locked up in a tower. This is _real_ , Arthur, this is _life and death_ , you can’t – you can’t expect to cure someone of _death_. You can’t think that everything is just all _right_ now because that’s not how things work, that’s not how _life_ works: Merlin _died_ , he should be _dead_ , he should have _stayed dead!_ ”

The silence afterward carries Morgana’s words into echoes that don’t quite fade.

Arthur looks at them: at Bors, whose jaw is held tight and unyielding; at Gwen, who wore flowers in her hair for Merlin and now won’t look at him at all; at Tristan, whose back is held in a careful arc, taut as his strung crossbow; and finally at the huddled shape of Merlin, all but vanishing into the shadows.

He wants to do something grand. He wants to _show_ them how very wrong they all are because they _have_ to be wrong, because if they’re not wrong, then Arthur has thrown away a family, a crown, a kingdom. And he _would_ do something grand – if only Merlin were closer, eyes lit up by the fire, head tucked into the curve of Arthur’s neck, sleepily promising that he’ll move, _just one minute, Arthur_ , before he falls asleep, cheek warm against Arthur’s skin.

But Merlin is far, far away.

So Arthur just stands and shakes out his bedroll. “You’re wrong,” he tells them determinedly. “You’re all wrong.”

***

In his dreams, Camelot burns.

The flames fold him close, warm and comforting and intimate as any cloak. They lick greedily at Arthur’s boots, at his tunic, lovingly heating his armor, his sword. They burn in his ear, whispering terror, and Arthur watches as Camelot falls, the stones giving way to dust, the colors surrendering to black. As soot and ash bury the dead in shoddy, inadequate graves of soil clotted thick with blood.

It is his fault; this, Arthur knows.

***

He doesn’t know why he wakes. Maybe it’s because the fire has died, leaving behind only sullen embers and the cold. Maybe it’s because Bors – who should be keeping watch – is snoring a bit too much for someone who is not supposed to be sleeping. Or maybe it’s because he can see Merlin’s hands, glittering pale in the moonlight as Merlin bends solicitously over Bors, close enough to sing him a lullaby.

Arthur’s first panicked thought is that he was wrong, Bors isn’t a threat to Merlin; no, Merlin is the threat here and how _easy_ it would be for him to kill all of them, to spin Bor’s death into his ear. How very, very easy it would be for Merlin to set Camelot aflame with maniacal ideas of revenge and justice.

But then he realizes that no one who snores that loudly can possibly be dead and Arthur tries to breathe because _of course_ Merlin would never do such a thing, this is _Merlin_ , who would look away every time they went hunting and Arthur went in for the kill. This is Merlin, exactly as he was: gentle and too kind and most of all, Arthur’s.

Merlin contemplates Bors for a moment before leaning down to take something.

It flashes silver for a brief, horrible moment and Arthur realizes it for what it is: Bors’ knife.

 _No_ , Arthur thinks despairingly and scrambles out of his bedroll, feet getting caught up in it. He catches himself on his hands, falling too hard, and then he runs, wondering how much longer he has to chase Merlin because he’s tired and he just wantsto be back in his chambers, with Merlin stretched out on the floor in front of the fire, cross save for the amused slant to his mouth because Arthur won’t stop _talking_ , _some of us have chores in the morning and are sleeping on the_ floor, and Arthur trying to stay awake because he likes the way Merlin’s hair falls across his brow, his skin shaded gold by the light of the fire.

That’s all he wants, and he’ll do anything – _anything_ – to have that again.

He catches up to Merlin just as the moon retreats behind clouds that look wrong in the night sky, almost invisible patches that cover up the stars. “Where are you going?” he demands, and he thinks that if he has to _chain_ Merlin to him, that’s what he’ll do, because Merlin can leave, but he’ll have to take Arthur with him because they’re a pair, aren’t they, a fallen prince and his not-quite-dead sorcerer? “You can’t just _leave_ ,” he says. “Look, we’ll leave tomorrow, I told you that, just wait until the morning, will you?”

He reaches out carefully and curves his hand around Merlin’s, which is clasped tight around the hilt of Bors’ knife. “What are you doing with that?” he asks, curling his fingers around Merlin’s knuckles. “Give that here.” He swallows, trying to chase away the thick taste of ash that coats his tongue. “Hey,” he says, stepping closer and pretending that he doesn’t notice Merlin flinch, his shoulders crumpling. “Hey,” he says again, trying desperately hard to be soothing. “Careful,” he says, not really paying attention to what he’s saying, only aware of how dangerous Merlin looks now, faced veiled in shadow and so, _so_ quiet, clutching too tightly at the knife.

“I’ve seen you chopping up things for Gaius,” he continues, trying to let his unnatural smile bleed into his words but Merlin is so very still and he won’t let _go_. “You’re lucky you’ve still got full use of both of your hands, not that one would think so, based on how long it takes you to polish my armor.” He shakes Merlin’s hand, trying to startle him into dropping the knife, but Merlin’s holding onto it like it’s part of him, another hand or a foot, and so he says, frustrated, “ _Merlin_.”

Merlin’s voice is harsh, harsher than any sound Arthur’s ever heard Merlin make. “I’m not him.”

Arthur goes still. “What?”

“I’m _not him_ ,” Merlin says, and tries to shove Arthur away, letting go of the knife in favor of pushing helplessly at Arthur’s shoulders. “You – you think you can do anything, can’t you?” he says, his voice wild. “It killed you, that you couldn’t save me. But Arthur, Morgana’s _right_.”

“No, she isn’t,” Arthur says fiercely.

“She _is_ ,” Merlin insists. “You can’t bring people back to life just as they were, Arthur. It’s not just _wrong_ , it’s _impossible_. I – _Merlin_ , _your_ Merlin, is _dead_ , do you understand? I’m not him.”

“You _are_ ,” Arthur says sharply. “Stop _saying_ that, the magic—”

“Magic,” Merlin says, his laugh approaching hysteria, “can do a great many things. Wonderful things. But it _cannot_ reverse death, not the way you want it to.”

Arthur grips Merlin’s upper arms, pressing until he can feel Merlin’s bones, hollow as a bird’s. “Stop it,” he says, like he can order this madness away. “You _are him_. There’s nothing wrong with this, the old man – he _said_ that I was being given this and I chose _you_ because you’re supposed to be here. You weren’t supposed to die, I _need you_ , and you should be _happy_ because you _died_ and now you’re alive.”

He slides his knuckles down the sharp curve of Merlin’s jaw, trying to soothe Merlin’s frantic pulse. The skin heats underneath his touch and he thinks that if he can just – just do this, then Merlin will _understand_ , Arthur doesn’t know why none of them _understand_ , magic is unnatural and Merlin can halt time and make things fly, and so why is this, bringing Merlin back, so unforgiveable?

Merlin shuts his eyes, shying away from Arthur’s touch and Arthur wants to _tell him_ : he wants to tell him that he only did it because it was _him_ , because if it were Morgana or Uther or someone else that he loves, he would’ve shaken his head and let them be. He would’ve buried them and mourned them and worn their memories like scars that he wouldn’t want to forget, but he would’ve moved on. But at some point they had stopped being Arthur and Merlin and started being _ArthurandMerlin_ , inextricably linked, and he loves him, loves Merlin’s shy smile and his dark, messy hair. He loves the way Merlin wakes him in the morning, flinging the curtains open and singing a cheery _Good morning_. He loves the way Merlin helps him out of his armor, fingers light but reverent, like this is what he was born to do.

“You’re alive,” Arthur says, curling Merlin’s hair under his ear.

Merlin opens his eyes and throws this at him, sharp and swift as a spear: “I was happy.”

“I know,” Arthur murmurs, his breath warming Merlin’s face. “And we can be happy again.”

Merlin’s laugh is a broken sound, pitched with fear. “No, Arthur. _I_ was happy. In that other place.”

Arthur stares at him. “You were dead.”

“ _I know that_ ,” Merlin says, and pushes Arthur’s hand away from his face. “Do you think that I don’t know that? But I was _happy_. I would’ve – almost everyone that I love is dead, and everyone dies, and all I had to do was _wait_. One day my mother would be there and Gwen and – and you. I would’ve seen you again, just in another world, one where I was _happy_ , one where the magic wasn’t secret, where I didn’t have to _hide_ anything, I could just be – me. Merlin.”

Arthur can’t breathe. “You—”

Merlin tries for a smile, but it seems his mouth can’t curve like that anymore – sweetly. “I wish I were still dead.” He lifts a tired wrist, points at the knife. “Better for both of us, isn’t it? You can go back to Camelot; no one will say anything, Tristan and Bors love you, and they won’t tell anyone, not if you tell them you killed me because you realized that you were wrong. You will be king one day, Arthur. You don’t need me for that, you’re meant to be king. It’s written.”

“No,” says Arthur. “No, I won’t let you. I don’t – I don’t _want this_ , Merlin, I don’t care about any of that, not anymore.”

“Maybe not now,” Merlin allows kindly. “Maybe not even tomorrow. But you’re her king, you were born to be her king. You’re upset, and I’m – I don’t – I’m pleased that I’ve meant something to you, but you’ll forget me. You _will_ ,” he says. “And that’s fine, you’re supposed to, I’m no one, in the grand scheme of it all. But you – you’re Arthur.”

“I won’t let you kill yourself,” Arthur says because he doesn’t want to listen to this, he _doesn’t_ , there’s no reason that he can’t have both, one day, because Merlin’s right, he _will_ be king and one day soon he’ll have to challenge Uther for Camelot and Arthur will win. And then he will have Camelot and Merlin and it makes so much _sense_ , and— “I love you,” he says.

It’s not exactly a bold declaration of love, not in such bleak tones; Arthur’s never murmured love to anyone, not to Morgana or Uther or even Gwen, during their short, unsophisticated romance two years ago, marked by chaste touches in the kitchens and innocent kisses in the hallways and realizing it would never work because Arthur had always loved Camelot more than he could love anyone else.

Until Merlin. Because this is what love is, isn’t it? Needing someone the way Arthur needs Merlin.

He’s never dreamt of this, professing his love to anyone, needing them like air and water and sleep, but if he had, he’d never expected the other person to reel back as if he’d been hit. “I love you,” Arthur says again, because it’s true, and he needs Merlin to understand that it will never again _just_ be Arthur, it will always be them, then and now and forever. “It’s not what I thought it would be like, I didn’t know what it would be like, but I know this: I saved you and you belong here. You can be happy here, _I’m_ here—”

Merlin’s shoulders hunch in on themselves. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he says hopelessly.

“ _Shut up_ ,” Arthur tells him. “Just – shut up, I _saved you_ and you’re just – you’re being ridiculous, I need you. And I won’t let you go.” He doesn’t know what he’s doing until he’s got Merlin dragged in close, until he can feel the press of Merlin’s ribs against his, their bones aligning and knocking together. Merlin makes a strangled noise like he wants to pull away, but he has his hands fisted in Arthur’s tunic and his mouth is opening and all that’s left is for Arthur to kiss him, so he does, kisses him and thinks wondrously that he’s not very good at this, because he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with his hands, restless because he wants to touch Merlin everywhere. And Merlin is not very good at this either, less kissing him and more biting him, teeth scraping against Arthur’s lip, fingers denting red half-moons into Arthur’s skin.

And later, when he’s got Merlin stretched out bare on the ground, Arthur’s hands mapping out the peaks and valleys of Merlin’s body, he realizes that he doesn’t know what to do, how to make this work. Neither of them know what to do, and it’s clumsy, this, trying to figure it out as they go along, but it doesn’t seem to matter, not with the need to keep touching, and even as the first of dawn glimmers over the horizon, Arthur doesn’t want to stop.

Merlin will wake everyone, he thinks, with his helpless, unintelligible moans and this simplest of litanies: _Arthur, God, oh God_. But Arthur doesn’t care; let them see, let them _understand_ what Arthur is to Merlin, what Merlin is to Arthur. This is nothing new, wanting to touch and be touched, because Arthur knows the lines of Merlin’s body, has learned them over the years, and now all that’s different is that he gets to taste them, gets to kiss up Merlin’s throat and catch his wet, bitter mouth, gets to drag his hand through Merlin’s hair, baring his neck to lay a kiss into its curve.

They get it right, eventually, Arthur moving over and inside Merlin, staring down at him in awe and thinking that _this_ must be magic, because he’s never, ever felt anything like this before. He whispers, “Tell me if it hurts,” and Merlin’s eyes are wide as a child’s as he says,

“I don’t care. I want you to hurt me.”

Arthur lets his head fall and his rhythm too. “Hurt me,” Merlin says, gasping out low, beautiful sounds, and Arthur wants to say _I don’t want to, I won’t hurt you, I won’t I won’t I won’t_ , but he doesn’t.

Merlin wouldn’t believe him anyway.

***

The morning skies are colorless.

Morgana takes it upon herself to help Arthur into his cloak, and when she’s got it clasped around his neck, she strokes the fine reds, the gold velvets, and says softly, “Where will you go?”

Arthur doesn’t look at Merlin, standing by himself, pale in the pale day, save for the purple around his mouth, gathered angrily along his neck where Arthur bit down, spilling praise and love and other things that Merlin didn’t return. But Merlin is here, didn’t run off as Arthur crept back to his bedroll for an hour’s worth of fitful sleep, and so that must mean something.

Arthur just doesn’t know what.

“South,” he says, wrapping a long strand of Morgana’s hair around his fingers. “Be well.”

Her kiss is cool, but her hands are warm, and they don’t release Arthur’s cloak until the very last moment, when they have to part. “Take care of him,” she says without looking at Merlin, the only thing she’s said to him since Arthur brought him back. “He’s still your prince, even if he’s no longer Camelot’s.”

“Morgana,” Arthur says gently.

Her mouth makes a funny shape, like she doesn’t know whether she should try for a smile or if she should cry. She settles for somewhere in between, and then she reaches for him again, kissing his hands, his cheek, his forehead. “Goodbye, Arthur,” she says, her voice tremulous, like it’s forever.

But it isn’t, Arthur wants to tell her, because Arthur is still Camelot’s and Camelot is still Arthur’s. So he deliberately doesn’t watch as they – Morgana and Gwen and the knights and the hapless squire who’d been promised an adventure and got more than he’d ever wanted – disappear over the hill, bound for a home while Arthur is bound for exile. Instead, he looks at Merlin, who refuses to look at him, but when Arthur goes to him, Merlin leans toward him, like a flower turning its face toward the sun.

“Let’s go, then,” Arthur says quietly.

(Later, years later, he’ll have wished he’d held onto Morgana for just a second longer, stroked his fingers through her hair just one more time, because Morgana is right: he will never see her again.)

 

 **8.**

Time slows, the farther away they get from Camelot, and Arthur had always known Camelot was the center of his world, but now he wonders if it’s the center of all the world, because out here, where Camelot ends and where the wild begins, time runs inconstantly. Long afternoons fade into short nights, the sun begrudging the moon its nightly reign.

They take a small house in a smaller village where the people speak in a strange language, a barbaric mishmash of Latin and some other language Arthur has never heard of. They regard Arthur and Merlin warily at first, eyeing their strange coins suspiciously and warning their scrawny daughters away. But weeks tumble into months and then they forget that Arthur and Merlin haven’t always lived here, Arthur with his slow, careful speech because he’s never been good at Latin, and Merlin who doesn’t speak at all.

Living with Merlin is a bit like living with a ghost, albeit a polite one. Arthur spends his mornings polishing his armor and a sword that he never uses. He clears out the main room and trains as best as he can, trapped within these four walls because it’s too dangerous to do this outside. They may be far from Camelot and these villagers may keep mostly to themselves, but word has a way of traveling over kilometers, over language barriers.

In the afternoons, he draws up plans, pouring his memories onto parchment: where Camelot’s walls are weak in the lower town; how to access the passageway that leads from the throne room to Uther’s chambers, a secret passage meant to protect Uther that will ultimately be his undoing; how Leon – because surely it will be Sir Leon to whom command of the knights will fall – will predictably arrange his forces if besieged.

He writes letters: cryptic, short notes. It takes two months for him to track down Lancelot, and an entire year to find Gwaine. Lancelot promises him a band of men and Gwaine promises three barrels of ale, but it will have to do.

He pays a girl to bring them cooked meals three times a day. At first, he asks her to bring two sets of meals, but Merlin disappears in the mornings before Arthur wakes and returns only when night sets in, darker here than it ever was in Camelot. He doesn’t tell Arthur what it is that he does, but Arthur assumes that he’s practicing magic in the forest that clings to the outskirts of the village, because he’s oddly pale for someone who spends so much time out of doors. He returns every night, though, and that is what is important, although there always comes a point, just as the sun vanishes beyond the horizon, that Arthur worries that today Merlin won’t come back, that he’ll vanish with the sun or be eaten up by the woods or captured by someone who has found out who they are.

But Merlin always comes back.

He comes back with bruises on his wrists, angry red gashes along his arms. Arthur never asks, just keeps a supply of salve in the cupboard and applies it carefully to Merlin’s wounds. Merlin wordlessly rolls up his sleeves, never hiding any but never offering any explanations either. Arthur gently massages the bruises, and the next night, all those gashes, all those bruises, will disappear, replaced with fresh, new ones. They leave behind no scars when they vanish, just smooth, unblemished skin, which Arthur knows isn’t due to any extraordinary healing property of the salve, but he applies the salve every night anyway, a terrible ritual that he doesn’t want to break.

Arthur lights a fire each night, even when the summer nights are thick with heat. He sits as close to Merlin as Merlin will allow, hoping that Merlin will fall asleep here, that his head will drop onto Arthur’s shoulder, that his breaths will settle into a shallow and easy rhythm against Arthur’s neck. But Merlin always keeps his elbows and his knees firmly drawn in, head lowered, unmoving save for the slow rise and fall of his chest. He doesn’t look at Arthur, doesn’t look at anything at all except for the fire, as if he’s entranced by it, as if the fire is promising him something that Merlin intends to see through.

At night they come together, and if Merlin is a stranger in the morning, in the darkness he becomes Arthur’s. They learn each other well, even without candlelight, moving helplessly against each other, Merlin saying _Hurt me, hurt me, Arthur_ , which, most of the time, is all that he says to Arthur all day. Arthur kisses Merlin’s bruises, sliding his hand down along the flat plane of Merlin’s chest. He presses his mouth to Merlin’s eyelids, to Merlin’s perpetually downturned mouth. Merlin always tastes bitter, no matter what he’s eaten that day, and Arthur becomes addicted to that taste. He remembers it in the oddest times: in the middle of working through his training forms, as he pens a nondescript letter to Lancelot with treason hidden between the lines. Sometimes he goes outside to look for Merlin in the middle of the day, venturing into the forest, needing to taste him _right now_ , but he never finds him.

He gives up looking.

When thunder rolls overhead, sweeping July into August, Arthur looks doubtfully outside and says, “Practice inside tomorrow. This storm won’t let up for at least a few days.”

Merlin says, “No,” and nothing else.

Every morning, Arthur wakes to an empty bed, the sheets to his left perfectly crisp, like he’d slept in it alone all night. And every morning, Arthur stares at a ceiling that will fall down one day soon if he doesn’t start patching it up, and he promises himself that today will be the day that he uncovers Merlin’s bright smile, long lost but never forgotten. Today will be the day that he opens his arms and Merlin comes to him. Today will be the day that, when he tells Merlin that he loves him, Merlin will say it back, low and sweet and truthful.

It never is.

 

 **Epilogue**

All of their preparations come to naught, because the summer of Arthur’s twenty-third year, Uther dies.

It wasn’t magic, Leon writes to Arthur; his heart merely stopped sometime in the middle of the night, as if its burden had become too much to bear. Uther had never named another successor, possibly because he was still young and had thought there were still decades left to sort out the line of succession, or possibly because even in the face of such deep betrayal, he’d loved Arthur and couldn’t endure the thought of anyone else succeeding him. Either way, Leon says in his cramped, harried handwriting, Camelot is Arthur’s, and she still loves Arthur, has always loved Arthur, and she bows down before him.

Arthur rides into Camelot in the dawn of his twenty-third birthday, too young to be king, but king nonetheless.

Merlin rides behind him, his cloak drawn over his head. The townspeople line up to watch this dreary procession, some in awe, some in sorrow, most in fear. One man – drunk so early in the day, or perhaps still drunk from last night – jeers, but he’s hushed by the crowd. Another brave but foolish man throws a potato at Merlin, along with the cry of _Devil!_ and Merlin barely avoids it. Gwaine deals with that man, dragging him off with a friendly smile and a friendlier knifepoint at his back.

On the third day of Arthur’s reign, he lifts the ban on magic. Camelot responds with unease, and Arthur’s councilors protest such a drastic overhaul to Camelot’s laws. _So soon?_ they say, horrified. _Sire, magic has been outlawed for years, and Camelot’s citizens fear it, we could have an uprising on our hands_.

Arthur refuses to listen, telling them all that on this issue, he will not compromise.

Merlin, who spends his days in the topmost room in the northern tower, knows that for all of Arthur’s bluster about how magic can be good, can be _useful_ , just like a sword – useful in the right hands and catastrophic in the wrong ones – that Arthur still fears magic as well. He knows that when Arthur lifts the ban on magic, it is for Merlin’s sake and Merlin’s sake only, a proclamation of love which Camelot fears to be a proclamation of madness.

A shrunken old woman in the lower town immediately declares herself to be a witch, seeking to capitalize on the lifting of the ban. She is strangled by her neighbor, a man who lost two sons to sorcery.

Arthur assigns three guards to Merlin’s person, but it’s pointless, really, because Merlin rarely comes down from his dark tower, practicing magic that he doesn’t want to use.

Merlin doesn’t want to walk these halls of this place that has so changed. Morgana is dead, died two years ago in her bath. Gwen had come in to see if she needed more hot water and had found her drowned, her hair a dark, lovely nimbus around her pale, peaceful face. Gwen had screamed and then not spoken for an entire year.

Gaius is dead as well, leaving behind only his musty books and bizarre potions. He died three weeks after Merlin, and the new royal physician is installed in the rooms opposite Gaius’ old ones, because Uther had forbidden anyone to encroach upon Gaius’ space.

And Merlin’s mother – she’s dead as well. Merlin sends her a message and receives a simple, black line on clean parchment. She died a year ago, alone and unhappy, knitting red neckerchiefs that her son would never again have need of. Arthur asks him if he wants to go back to Ealdor and Merlin says that he has no need of anything outside his tower.

He doesn’t tell Arthur that this is all his fault, that he would be with all of them – Morgana, Gaius, his mother, his _father_ , _Will_ – if Arthur had just left him in that other world. He doesn’t tell Arthur that he would be happy, free, instead of imprisoned here in this tower, because Arthur would tell him that he _is_ free, but no, Merlin isn’t free, because there’s no one left, and Camelot has shunned him and one day, he thinks, Arthur will have to shun him too.

Arthur still comes to him every night, and Merlin lets him, wants him, even. His days are marked by Arthur, Arthur in his bed, Arthur leaving, Arthur’s smiles. When he undresses Merlin that first night of their return to Camelot, Arthur looks at his arms in wonder, clean of wounds, of bruises. “You’ve stopped hurting yourself,” Arthur says, his lashes so light, an almost invisible gleam against his skin.

Merlin wants to laugh, wants to say, “I’ve never hurt myself,” but he doesn’t.

He’s tried to, of course, every day, tried to _feel_ , but there’s nothing to feel. He’d cut down, down until his muscle gave way, sliced open, but there was no pain, there hadn’t been anything. There were marks – red, glaring marks – but they were always healed by morning. Merlin suspects that if he tried to cut off a hand, it would be grown back by morning as well, fresh and limber as ever.

He doesn’t tell Arthur this. He just tells Arthur to _Hurt me, Arthur, please, hurt me_ , knowing that Arthur can’t hurt him the way Merlin wants him to. Merlin’s pain is clasped tightly around his heart, if he has one anymore, and Merlin will never be able to cut it out.

***

The years pass quickly. Arthur reluctantly marries and then spurns his wife each night by going to Merlin’s bed. Merlin asks him how exactly he thinks he’ll get a child this way, and Arthur clutches him closer and tells him petulantly that he _will_ , Merlin, stop bothering him, he’s starting to sound like Arthur’s councilors.

Each year, a new piece of Albion falls to Arthur, as Merlin had always known it would. After ten years, Albion starts to look a bit like a patchwork quilt, different cloths stitched together, strange-looking but fitting together perfectly. The queen gives birth to a stillborn boy who has Arthur’s golden hair and Arthur’s pink mouth.

For a month afterward, Arthur doesn’t come to Merlin’s bed.

Merlin feels himself going insane in his tower, throwing things, kicking furniture, lighting fire to his bed sheets, because Arthur’s all he has left, Arthur is the one who’s done to him, how _dare_ he ignore him now? When Arthur finally comes, he says nothing, just tucks Merlin into his side and tells him he loves him, and Merlin sullenly lets him, lets Arthur kiss him, and he doesn’t tell Arthur that he loves him.

He doesn’t think that this is love, wanting to be hurt (and wanting to hurt, though he never admits that, either).

Gwen doesn’t talk to Merlin for three years until they come across each other in the hall and she haltingly says, “Hello, um, my – lord,” and then, “oh, this is _stupid_ ,” and she hugs him and tells him she loves him, and Merlin says, “That’s what I’m here for, apparently.” He loved Gwen once and wants to love her again, so he lets her bring lunch up to him, lets her sit with him and spin stories about the seamstress who’s taken a liking to Gwaine and deliberately sews his trousers too tightly so that he has to keep coming back to get them loosened.

Merlin listens, even if he doesn’t care.

Ten years go by, a decade that seems like only a year. Arthur throws a feast for Merlin’s thirtieth year and it’s a cheerful affair that everyone attends because they love Arthur and they love feasts and good food more than they fear Merlin. Merlin asks Arthur if he _must_ go, and Arthur tells him loftily that they can hardly celebrate Merlin’s birthday without Merlin.

Lancelot sits down next to Merlin, catches a blur of a child that runs by, and settles her on his knee. She has Lancelot’s eyes and Gwen’s curly hair, and she speaks that language which all children seem to know and which is incomprehensible to adults.

“You hardly look twenty,” Lancelot observes, kissing his daughter’s upturned nose. “I’ve already started to lose hair and you look like you’ve barely even started to shave.” He looks woefully at Gwen, who is standing by the queen and glaring at Lancelot as he lets their daughter have a sip of his wine.

“He’s not wrong,” Gwen says later, peering up at him. She reaches out to touch the corner of his eye and sighs. “You’ve not got any lines, but I suppose that just means you don’t laugh as much as you ought to,” she tells him sternly. “Although if Lancelot would be serious once in a while, he’d stop _getting_ so many lines,” she adds, but she’s smiling because she loves Lancelot and Lancelot loves her and she’s happy, ridiculously, buoyantly happy.

That night, Merlin looks at himself in the mirror, at the sharp curve of his jaw, at his smooth, pale skin, unmarred by time. At his hands, with its slim fingers and easy grace. At his frame, angular as a teenager’s. He can see Arthur in the reflection, in bed and watching Merlin with resigned amusement. Arthur is thirty-three and still handsome, will always be handsome. But there are lines around his eyes, deeper than Lancelot’s because to a king, one decade feels like three. Arthur has to use odd-looking lenses when he reads now, because the royal physician had insisted after noticing how Arthur squinted at some proposal or another. And Arthur has lost some of his muscle, a consequence of spending long hours on his throne. His leanness has given way to thinness, but where Merlin is angular with youth, Arthur takes on the angularity of the old and tired.

So this, Merlin thinks with dawning horror, is the price that Arthur has unknowingly paid.

He shudders with the realization, shutting his eyes and thinking _no_ , no, no no no.

This is what he is now: a sorcerer who yearns for death, a sorcerer who will never die.

Arthur will. Arthur will grow old, will shrink into a shadow of himself. And so will Gwen and Lancelot and Gwaine and everyone else. They will die – soon, because if this decade has gone by so quickly, as it has for Merlin, the next few will go by even more quickly, because time has a way of speeding up as one ages, though Merlin will never age, and it’s a dilemma he doesn’t want to think about.

They’ll all die and Merlin will not. Merlin will watch as Camelot falls – because it will, without Arthur, and Arthur and the queen still haven’t managed a son, still haven’t managed a _child_ – and as it takes Albion with it. Perhaps it will fall to the Romans, or perhaps to the barbarians across the sea, but it will fall, and Merlin will have to watch it. Centuries will go by, and the people a millennium from now will be very different than these, but Merlin will still be here, so very old but also so very young.

The world will shrivel up one day, because that will die before Merlin does as well. The skies will fade to black, the oceans to ice. Trees will surrender, the sun will grow hotter, larger, and man – persistent but vulnerable – will disappear. And still Merlin will be here.

“Merlin,” Arthur says in amused tones. “You’re growing vain in your old age. Come to bed.”

Merlin’s hands shake as he puts out the light.

He gets into bed and tries not to touch Arthur; he doesn’t need Arthur to hurt him tonight, Arthur has already done that, oh, how he’s done that.

Arthur slides a warm arm around Merlin’s middle, draws him flush against Arthur’s side, arranging Merlin as he likes him: with his cheek pressed against Arthur’s chest, with his fingers dipping low beneath Arthur’s shift. Arthur falls asleep almost immediately, always tired, but he’s allowed to be tired, Merlin thinks, because one day he won’t have to wake up, and then he can sleep forever.

Merlin turns his face into Arthur’s chest, unable to breathe, but it won’t matter, because he doesn’t need to breathe, does he?

That night, Merlin wakes to the sounds of his own screams.

Arthur, though?

Arthur doesn’t hear him.

 

 _finis_


End file.
